TIME Women Changing the World by The Editors of TIME

Author:The Editors of TIME
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liberty Street
Published: 2018-03-02T05:00:00+00:00

With fellow Democratic senators at the Dirksen Building in January 2014

Hirono served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2013 and has served in the Senate since 2013.

Katharine Jefferts Schori

First woman to be elected presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, spending lots of time in the mountains and the islands in Puget Sound just fascinated with the wonders of creation. I was quite convinced that I wanted to be a scientist. Having a sense of the wonder of the world around us and the great diversity and the health that diversity signals translates into human communities as well.

The Bible says many things about women’s roles. And the reality is, everybody cherry-picks. We all look for the pieces that affirm what we already believe. If we’re faithful, we keep looking and hopefully we encounter things that confront us, that challenge us and that might transform our view of the role of every human being.

I read the narratives as saying that God has created human beings in God’s image, that we are meant to be partners in caring for the whole of creation, that each person has particular gifts that may or may not be linked to gender, and that we’re meant to exercise those gifts on behalf of the whole.

After I finished seminary, I received a call to go back to the congregation that I’d been a part of. And early on, a couple of older women came up to me and said, “We don’t believe in women priests, but you’re all right.” It’s the sense of seeing a real human being exercising a role you hadn’t imagined women being in before that really converts hearts.

The day I was elected presiding bishop, after all the hullabaloo in the house of deputies when the consents were given, a man said to me, “Now, don’t you wear dangly earrings.” It just confronted his image of what was proper and appropriate.

I was elected in 2006, and Bishop Gene Robinson, who is openly gay, had been elected in 2003. That was an excuse around the communion for deciding that the Episcopal Church was heretical, that it had done something so offensive that it no longer belonged to the community, and the parts of the Episcopal Church that supported that decision didn’t represent what other Episcopalians thought was appropriate. So it was the lightning rod for conflict that was not just about gay and lesbian people but about leadership that didn’t look like a straight white male, which had been the tradition for a very long time. I think it opened a lot of doors, and it’s prompted a lot of creative conversation and some transformation.

Engendering opposition is a sign of being effective. If there’s opposition, it means they’re noticing that something has changed, that there’s a difference. That’s really the beginning of the conversation, if people are willing to engage.

I worked hard to expand the understanding of the average Episcopalian as to who we are as a body.

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